Empire in Black and Gold

Achaeos looked around at the others, most of whom were at least half awake by now. Tisamon, truly on watch, was staring at him keenly, blade already bared. ‘Come away from the fire and talk,’ Achaeos insisted.

Stenwold cursed and got to his feet, bulging blanket wrapped around him, and his sword still in his hand. He looked just like a bad actor playing a comic hero. They removed from the fire enough that their talk would not disturb the others, though still under Tisamon’s harsh gaze.

‘You’re going east,’ Achaeos said.

Stenwold rubbed his eyes with the forearm of his sword hand. ‘Achaeos, that’s not exactly news.’

‘You do not know what is east, of here.’

‘The Empire’s east, Achaeos. Asta’s east. Szar’s east, and Myna, and then Sonn, and eventually you get to Capitas and you meet the Emperor. Of all the Beetles in the world, you don’t need to tell me what lies east.’

‘The Darakyon is east. East and close,’ Achaeos said urgently.

Stenwold just looked at him. ‘You mean the forest? What’s that to you? Your people don’t live there, do they? I didn’t think even the Mantis-kinden lived there.’

‘Nobody lives there. Nobody travels there who has any sense. The Darakyon is evil.’ Achaeos clutched at Stenwold’s blanket-cape. ‘Terrible things were done there.’ He sensed, rather than heard, Tisamon’s stance shift.

Stenwold continued to peer at him, tired and irritable and mired in his own difficulties. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said shortly. ‘I have other things to worry about than the beliefs of your people.’ He shook off Achaeos’s hand and returned towards the fire. The Moth watched him go with bared teeth.

So fly! he thought. Fly away from this fool and his mission. But he could not, and he almost wept in frustration at it, at the invisible chains that were keeping him here.

There was a seat for the driver at the front of each automotive, and room for just one more sitting beside him, beneath the shade of a rough canvas roof. Thalric was the extra one in the lead vehicle but he was reflecting that it was a remarkably uncomfortable way to travel even so. His own men and the slavers were sitting along the open sides of the vehicle, exposed to the dust, and he was beginning to wonder if the slaves, confined in their cage, didn’t have the better deal of it.

He considered his earlier conversation with Cheerwell Maker, and decided that he had lost control of it. It was not just her jibe at the end, however well aimed. He had indulged himself: he had wasted time in boasts about the Empire that he felt so fiercely about. Strutting before a young woman, honestly! Still, perhaps he had given her sufficient food for thought. They were nearly at Asta now. If she decided to stick, then there were people there who would loosen her.

Or perhaps he could pass her over to Brutan. He considered the slaver’s likely response to the gift and realized that he found it distasteful, but that was not for any reason that would have satisfied Miss Maker. As an individual, the slavers’ habits irked him primarily because they were running their operation for their own sordid enjoyment, and that was not the Empire’s way. As a servant of the Empire, however, he knew it all served, in the end. The Brutans of this world were most slaves’ first introduction to imperial policy, and that was a hard but necessary lesson. They had to be shown that they had no right and no appeal. Any slave who could say, ‘You can’t do that to me,’ was not a slave.

There was a thump on the roof of the cab, and a moment later someone put their head down into Thalric’s field of vision, annoying the driver beside him. It was a Fly-kinden man in the uniform of the Scout Corps.

‘Message for you, sir,’ the Fly reported.

‘Well?’

‘Care to join me up top, sir?’

Thalric narrowed his eyes, but the Fly was silhouetted against the outside glare and his expression could not be read. With a hiss of annoyance Thalric pushed himself out of the side of the cab, grabbing at rungs while flickering his Art-wings to keep him stable. The Fly was sitting cross-legged atop the wagon when Thalric reached him, forward enough that he was out of earshot of the other men.

‘This had better be important.’

‘You’re summoned, Major. Report to the quartermaster’s in Asta after sunset tonight.’

‘Summoned? Who by?’ Thalric caught up. ‘Major, is it?’

‘Yes, Major. I’ll look for you there, sir.’ In an instant the Fly kicked off into the air, letting the passing breeze catch him. His wings sparked to life and he was off.

Major? Major meant Rekef business. Thalric was a captain in the Imperial Army, but the Rekef gave out its own ranks. Despite the dust and the heat he felt a queasy chill inside him. Rekef Inlander seemed most likely — investigating him? He had done nothing wrong. He had been telling the truth when he professed to Cheerwell Maker his unbending loyalty. Still, he knew that, to catch all treason and malfeasance in the Empire, the Rekef machine had to grind small and thorough, and innocents would always get caught up in the teeth of the wheels. Of course he would make the sacrifice willingly, if the Empire demanded it. It was just that he would rather not have to.

Che could no longer dispute that they were approaching somewhere. Where there had been scrubby wildland, now there was a packed-dirt road that the slave wagons were churning up with their tracks. Che and Salma had been given some time now to watch the other travellers, those passing in the opposite direction and those the slave convoy overtook. The sight was not encouraging.

They saw squads of soldiers, mostly. Many were heading west. Others were returning patrols, slogging wearily through the dust with spears sloped against their shoulders. Occasionally a messenger would thunder past on horseback, or the shadows of flying men would pass over the prisoners’ cage.

‘Where is there, out here?’ Che wondered. The Lowlander cartographers had never been much for going beyond the borders of the lands they knew. It was part of the inward-looking mindset that was now giving the Wasps such free rein.

‘Commonweal maps don’t go into much detail here. Just “wildlands”, that kind of thing,’ said Salma. ‘Mind you, they’re mostly about a hundred years out of date at the least. It’s been a while since the Monarch’s Nine Exploratory Heroes were sent to the four corners of the world looking for the secrets of eternal life.’

‘The who sent for what?’ she asked incredulously. He grinned at her. She had noticed a difference in him, after her return from Thalric’s tent, and after his concern for her had been allayed. When she had pressed him on it, he had eventually admitted this gem of knowledge that he had mined in her absence.

‘Her name,’ he had revealed, ‘is Grief in Chains.’

And she had stared at him, and then remembered the Butterfly-kinden dancer who had so fascinated him. ‘What sort of a name is that?’ she had asked, nettled. She had always had a chip on her shoulder about her own name.

‘Oh, they change their names a lot, Butterflies,’ he admitted. ‘Still, don’t you think it’s nice?’

And there had been a little extra life in him, from then on, something his own chains could not drag down. Now he was grinning at her and she could not tell whether he was being truthful or not. ‘Three centuries ago the Monarch was very old, and he sent the nine greatest heroes of the Commonweal out into the unexplored parts of the world, because his advisors and wizards had told him that the secret of life eternal was out there to be found. Some went north across the great steppe, through the Locust tribes and the distant countries of fire and ice, and the ancient, deserted mountain kingdoms of the Slugs. Some went east where the barbarians live, and where the broken land is studded with cities like jewels, or to where the great forests of the Woodlouse-kinden grow and rot all at the same time. Some went west, and sailed across the seas to distant lands where wonders were commonplace and the most usual things were decried as horrors not to be tolerated. And some,’ and here his smile grew mocking, ‘went south across the Barrier Ridge, and found a land where no two people can agree on anything, and the civilized comforts of a properly measured life were almost completely unknown. And five of the Exploratory Heroes returned, with empty hands, but with tales enough to keep the Regent’s wise men debating for centuries.’

She was agog, just for a moment, waiting. ‘And? What about the others? Did they find it?’

He laughed at her. ‘Nobody knows. They never came back. Some people still say, though, that the last of the Heroes still wanders distant lands, living eternally, eternally young, trying only to get his prize back to a Monarch who died just two years after the Heroes set out.’

Che tried to appear unimpressed. ‘Your people are very strange. Are all those places real?’